Quote

Perfection is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If you are a perfectionist, at least stop telling everybody you're one and try to get over it yourself, alone in your home with the lights off

Augusten Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Everybody
Perfectionist
Alone
Originality
Light
Lights
Home
Perfection
Trying
Telling
Casket
Creativity
Caskets
Least
Satin
Stop
Lined

More quotes by Augusten Burroughs

Image
Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I'm telling you.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I missed him so much that I had physical sensations of loss, all over my body. Like one minute I was missing an arm, the next my spleen. It was making me feel sick, like throwing up.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I was like a packet of powdered Sea Monkeys and they were like water.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Red hair is great. It's rare, and therefore superior.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I'm not going to waste my energy looking into the eyes of someone like the guy who blew my legs off trying to find a way to forgive him for doing something that horrible when there are way more productive ways I could be spending my life. You've got to focus on moving on.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
There's a lot about being A Writer that has nothing to do with writing. That's one thing I've discovered. You've got to meet with the sales force, and you've got to have all these luncheons, and be gracious, and you've got to give a lot of presentations and you've got to give a lot of speeches, and you've got to be on tour.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Self-pity is the bestiality of emotions: it absolutely disgusts people. When you're feeling pity for yourself, and somebody says to you 'You think maybe it's time for the pity party to be over? You should stop feeling sorry for yourself and try to think positive,' it makes you wish you could saw their head off.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I love you, she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Not crazy in a 'let's paint the kitchen bright red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God' sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.p28
Augusten Burroughs
Image
All of us are richer and more fascinating and more complex than we can ever know.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
The past doesn't haunt us, we haunt the past.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
You can make almost anything a learning or positive experience. I think I offer a good example of how to make the most out of what life gives you and how to keep moving on.
Augusten Burroughs